


Muted

by calrissian18



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Language, M/M, Post-Nogitsune, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 15:03:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3386168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calrissian18/pseuds/calrissian18
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The aftermath is almost worse than the battle because there’s no adrenaline to distract them from the wreck they’re left standing in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Muted

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the fullmoon_ficlet prompt: Bland.

Stiles’ world is bland.  Not just dark but gritty, like he’s seeing it through some sort of grainy film.  The remote’s resting heavily in his open palm on the arm of his chair, forgotten.  The channel the TV’s on is nothing more than quiet snow in the background but Stiles isn’t looking at it.  He’s staring at the paint on the walls and wondering when it started to fade.

“Stiles?”

Stiles’ head comes around slowly, with a cricking motion like he’s a wind-up doll on its last legs.  He blinks at his dad, notes the hand hovering over the butt of where his gun would be if he were wearing his duty belt.

He flicks on the light next to his shoulder, asks with something that’s trying to be a grin, “Why are you sitting in the dark, kiddo?”

Stiles stares at him.  He forgot the question almost as soon as it was asked and says instead in a rasp, “Did you think I wasn’t me?”  He hasn’t quite gotten his voice back yet.  Hasn’t figured out how the vocal cords work again, like the nogitsune has found a unique way to drag it up so it sounded like Stiles and now it doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to anymore.  He stares down at his hand, his fingers still curved around the remote and it feels as heavy as a brick, his arm tingling.  They twitch when he focuses on them.  “Sometimes I think I’m not me,” he admits under his breath.

His dad takes heavy steps towards him, settles stiffly into the armchair next to him like every muscle in his body aches.  They watch the snow and Stiles muses about how the colors have changed.

* * *

The pack meeting is subdued and Stiles stands the whole time, doesn’t make eye contact because nothing’s the same here either.  Derek’s loft, it still has all the same breaks in it – in the wall, in the spartan decoration, in the person who owns it but it’s not painted in the same shades.

Scott’s eyes cut over to him too many times to count, searching for something in him that Stiles doesn’t want to admit isn’t there.  Not tonight at least.  He doesn’t feel guilty – though Isaac and Lydia both have a raise to their lip when they deign to look at him.  He just feels disconnected, a step removed from all of them, which is impressively  _worse_.  He’d fallen behind, like that Cyndi Lauper song.  He doesn’t know how to catch up either, isn’t sure he wants to.

“Stiles?” 

Stiles’ head snaps up and the words to  _Time after Time_  fall out of his head.  It’s just Derek, standing there, blinking at him with his hand holding Stiles’ forearm.  Stiles feels it like he’s curling his fingers over a heavy winter coat, layers between their skin, only Stiles isn’t even wearing long sleeves tonight.  He looks around at the empty loft and then back at Derek.  He hadn’t realized they were alone, hadn’t seen the place clear out.

There’s concern in the furrow of Derek’s brow, the frown pulling at his lips. 

Stiles gently extricates his arm, stares at him and asks, “Where are you going this time, Derek?” 

He looks startled, asks, confused, “What?” 

“You don’t stick around,” Stiles tells him.  He’s not Derek’s pack.  He’s not Derek’s anything because Derek doesn’t have anything that he hasn’t lost.  And Derek doesn’t stay unless you’re somebody.  Stiles isn’t somebody.  He’s less somebody than he’s ever been.  “You just don’t,” he reiterates when Derek looks like he might argue.  He asks like he’s vicariously sharing in the excitement of an extravagant vacation, “So where are you going?”

* * *

The people who know, they look at his eyebrow or his cheek or the mole next to his left eye rather than actually meeting his gaze.  He would’ve expected it to make him feel lonely but it doesn’t.  The world’s still drawn with all the wrong paints and that’s enough to keep his mind occupied.  He walks next to Scott and Kira and feels a universe away.

“You want to come over tonight?” Scott says, leaning up against the locker next to Stiles’.

Stiles doesn’t remember the combination to it.  It’s one of those things that’s just  _gone_.  He remembers an endless cycle of decay and regrowth, watching everything beneath his feet die and use its own carcass to rebuild again.  He remembers things he’s never done, blood he’s never spilled and people whose faces he made sure time would forget.  He sneers at the lock on his locker and it’s such a stupid thing to make him feel so inadequate.

Scott’s still looking at him, waiting for an answer to a question Stiles doesn’t remember.  He’s spared having to ask him to repeat it when his head slams into the locker.  He feels the reverberation under his hand where he’s caught himself more than he feels the pain where his head hit metal.  There’s something so wrong with him. 

Hands find the front of his shirt, twist up in the collar of it and pull him around just to push him back again.  The lock he can’t open digs into his shoulder uncomfortably and he’s dragged forward and slammed back.  His eyes close as his head smacks into the locker a second time and there’s an explosion when he opens his eyes again.  Not of stars or of pain or of blackness, but of  _color_.  The  _right_  colors.  It’s the first time he’s seen them since the nogitsune left him.

Isaac’s eyes are blue, his lips – pulled back in a sneer – are pink on the outer parts and red where they’re tight against his white teeth.  Even his jacket is blacker than Stiles has been able to see.  “Murderer,” his hisses, the word tripping all the way down Stiles’ spine.  “It was your fault.  You’re the one stupid enough,  _weak enough_  to get possessed, it was your hands.”  He’s panting like this is taking everything he’s got, and one of the hands around Stiles’ shirt slides up to his neck, notches under his chin.

Isaac’s eyes are rimmed in the brightest gold Stiles has ever seen and claws are creating divots in his skin.

His throat is tight, burning under Isaac’s grip and Stiles isn’t sure what’s going to kill him first – the suffocation or the claws but he doesn’t fight it either way.  Scott does.  He grabs Isaac by both wrists and forcibly bends his arms away and everything in the fury on his face says he has no qualms about breaking bones should Isaac fight the direction Scott’s dragging him.

Stiles instinctually bends over himself, hands on his knees, catching his breath and hand gingerly smoothing over his neck as if to confirm it’s unencumbered.  His head is throbbing and he closes his eyes with a wince.  Kira helps him up again and Stiles opens his eyes and finds himself looking at the colors around him through a fogged lens.

Scott and Isaac are gone and with them went the way the world is supposed to be.

* * *

There’s a cut above his eye from Isaac’s tantrum and Stiles waits in the nurse’s station and wonders what color the padding under him really is.  She offers him a pass on the rest of the day as she’s bandaging the cut.  Stiles doesn’t take it because he’s got a plan now. 

He sits on the bench during lacrosse practice, pretends to be waiting for Scott and instead corners Isaac in the locker room, says, “I’m not going to stop you.  Scott’s still with Kira, it’s open season if you want it.”

Isaac licks the corner of his mouth, rustles the shirt in his hand like he’s trying to gauge the genuineness of the offer.  “You’re fucked up, aren’t you, Stilinski?”

Stiles shrugs.  He just needs to get Isaac mad enough, to get him to stop thinking and start attacking because when he’s there and snarling, torn between fury and desperation, there’s pain and color and real sensation and Stiles doesn’t know why it’s him.  Doesn’t care either.  He just wants it back.  “Killing people does that to you,” he says.

Isaac’s eyes flash and he starts forward.  “You fuck—” 

Stiles braces himself but keeps his eyes open because he  _wants_  to see.  He wants the colors back. 

“What are you two doing here?” Finstock interrupts, gesturing between the two of them with his clipboard.  “Practice is over, ladies.  If you want to dance, you’re going to have to do it off school grounds.”  He snorts at his own joke and walks off muttering amusedly under his breath.

Isaac scoffs, slams the door of his locker closed, tosses his shirt over the shelf of his shoulder and follows Finstock’s lead.

* * *

Stiles doesn’t sleep anymore.  Like he doesn’t do a lot of things anymore – talk right or see right or move right.  He remembers when he was a kid, when he found out that he could pull the limbs and heads from his GI Joes, rip them from their sockets and rearrange all the parts.  It’s a cruel justice that something’s done the same to him.  Put him back together with pieces that aren’t his. 

“You shouldn’t be alone.”

Stiles doesn’t startle, though he thought he was alone.  He’s too far away from the moment, blanketed in some dull form of isolation that’s keeping him from experiencing things in surround sound or technicolor.  Isaac steps up to him, shoulders hunched, like he doesn’t know what to make of the thing next to him.

Stiles shrugs, points out, “I’d see someone coming miles off.”  Isaac’s concern seems odd, forced somehow.  Stiles’ answer isn’t wrong though, the clearing stretches out wide on every side of him.  It would be difficult to be snuck up on in such an open space.  Though he supposes Isaac did do just that.  Stiles simply doesn’t care enough to be any more careful than this.

Isaac licks his lower lip, is staring out into the woods the clearing dead-ends into rather than at Stiles and he says, squinting his eyes, “That’s not what I meant.”

Oh.  But he is alone, they’re kind of all alone in this.  The aftermath almost worse than the battle because there’s no adrenaline to distract them from the wreck they’re left standing in.  “Are you sure you aren’t projecting?” he asks.  It’s partly niggling, partly genuine. 

“No,” Isaac says simply, not at all seeming caught out or embarrassed by the truth in the accusation.  He shrugs a shoulder and offers after a moment, “I could call Scott.” 

Stiles sighs and, no, Isaac couldn’t call Scott.  No one should call Scott, not if they wanted him to keep being Scott.  Stiles sucks in one side of his lower lip and slowly lets it go.  “I smile for Scott,” he says finally.  “It’s not a lie, not really.  He knows there’s nothing behind it and he believes it anyway.  Because he wants to, because it’s easier.  That’s not a lie either.”  Stiles darts a glance at Isaac to find him listening intently.  “See,” he says softly, “if he admits how broken I am, after already losing Allison, if he admits I might never be right again?  I don’t think he’d ever recover.”  It’s the truth.  Simple.  Brutal.  Spoken for the first time.

He knows Isaac’s never considered it, that Scott might not be prepared to soldier on and the information sinks in and leaves him visibly shaken.  He’s a little less certain when he says, “What about Lydia?”

Stiles shakes his head, touches each fingertip to his thumb methodically.  On both hands.  “She’s not the same girl I knew.  Did you notice that,” he asks conversationally without looking up, “how she’s changed?  She’s been crushed, to fit a different mold I guess, one where she’s less loud, less sure, less her.”  He shrugs.  “I don’t know her anymore.”  Or maybe he never really did.  It’s hard to be sure when he spent so long kept at a distance but, either way, she feels different to him now too.  “I think I’d still die for her, but I wouldn’t live for her.  I did once.  And it seems so strange now.” 

Isaac seems to have exhausted what he came to say.  Has nothing left to offer now that Stiles has carefully hacked away the only people he has left who would care about him standing alone in a clearing at three in the morning.

He doesn’t leave though, nor does he look inclined to do so any time soon.  So Stiles asks him the question that’s been on the tip of his tongue since the nogitsune was killed: “Does the world look right to you?”

Stiles can hear the sound of Isaac breathing the air’s so still and it’s so quiet between them before he says gruffly, like it costs him something to admit, “The world hasn’t looked right since Allison died.”

“No.  I don’t mean poetically.  I mean—” Stiles frowns, trying to explain, “The colors are different.  The leaves, they’re not green anymore.  They’re teal.  The sky isn’t robin’s egg, it’s cobalt.  The hues are darker, like the world’s being painted in a muted palette.  Like everything’s gotten slightly dimmer.”  Stiles’ voice is becoming more of a desperate croak because he knows what answer he’s going to get and it  _terrifies_  him.  “You know how they tell you that it’s possible that everyone sees colors differently?  That what you think is fire engine red might be brick red to someone else and we’ll never know it?  I think I came back different,” he admits hoarsely, breath barely able to carry the words, “someone else.  Someone who doesn’t see the same colors.  I’m not… me anymore.  Not quite.  Not enough that the colors have changed but enough that the shades of them have.”

Isaac hasn’t moved next to him but somehow, instinctually, Stiles knows he’s tense in a way he wasn’t before.

Stiles licks his lip and tells him, “That’s why I went looking for you.  When you—”  He brings a hand up to his throat, it’s still in the process of purpling and aches every time he swallows. “It made everything pop.  It made the colors bright again.  I don’t know why, but I wanted it back.”

Isaac looks away from him, mouth tightening on a pinched frown.  “It has nothing to do with me.  It was probably the pain or the shock or—I didn’t do anything.  I never have.  I didn’t even have her at the end.”  He’s drowning in bitterness as he spits out, “She loved Scott.”  He huffs, something like a laugh but slightly unsteady.  “She still loved Scott, I was just… filler.”

Stiles gapes at him, genuinely surprised he thought—that he didn’t understand.  “You had her,” Stiles tells him firmly.  Isaac scoffs but Stiles speaks over it.  “You didn’t have _all_  of her.  It’s better that way, right that way.  Someone had all of me.”  It comes out shaky and the terror of it still punctuates the words.  He smiles grimly down at his hands.  “I’m beginning to think you never recover from that.”  His heartbeat’s picked up and his breathing’s a little more rapid because talking about this, recounting it when he’s not sure all of him  _is_  all of him is—

Isaac reaches over and holds on to Stiles’ elbow like it’s an anchor, something to ground him, plant his feet.  It doesn’t feel like Isaac is grasping him through a layer of cloth either.  They’re skin to skin and Stiles has almost forgotten what that feels like.

* * *

There’s a sign in the cafeteria, bright yellow – one of the brightest yellows Stiles has ever seen, so glaring it had given him a headache a time or two.  It’s saffron today and seems to be paling further with each day that passes.  Stiles looks down at where gray-knuckled hands are gripping his lunch tray and half-expects to see himself fading away.

That thought is too much and he’s up and stumbling out of the room before he can think better of it.  It’s Isaac who comes after him, Isaac who finds him in the locker room, back against the shower wall and head tilted into the spray.

He walks in like Stiles is a skittish woodland creature, all condescending caution and guarded tone.  “You okay?”

Stiles rubs a hand down his face.  He can’t explain any of this to someone who’s only ever had their own thoughts greet them when they looked inward.  “There were too many things in my head,” he says, realizing how insane he sounds.  “I had to wash them out.”

Fuck.  He’s losing his mind.   _Losing?_  he second guesses himself.   _Lost.  It hasn’t been yours for a while now_.

Isaac holds up Stiles’ bag and says, “I’ll take you home.”

Stiles should argue, should rail against being treated like an invalid or, worse, a potential threat, should do anything other than hand his keys over to Isaac and exhaustedly slump in the passenger’s seat of his Jeep.  He’s squelching, soaking the upholstery, and he doesn’t care.  Can’t really remember what it feels like  _to_  care about things.  There’s a weariness that’s making his bones feel brittle, that’s making his head feel stupid, that’s making it hard to interact with anything.

Isaac gets out when Stiles does, walks him around to his back door so he won’t drip  _through_  his house.

Stiles scrubs at his face, pushes water up into his hair and grins a cracked grin.  He’s dripping where he stands and he’s sure he would feel heavy even without being sopping wet.  He’s glad for it now though because his eyes are starting to well from sheer frustration and it’ll be harder to notice when his cheeks are already glistening.  “What the fuck is wrong with me?” he asks, sounding close to a reckless sort of laughter.

Isaac lifts Stiles’ hand, turns it over so it’s palm up and drops his keys into it.  He says quietly and without judgment, “I think you might have PTSD, something like it at least.”

Stiles swallows, feeling his skin prickle where Isaac’s holding onto him.  He’s staring down at it, where they’re touching, looks up and sees Isaac’s doing the same, which means he doesn’t see it coming when Stiles leans in.  Their foreheads brush first and then Stiles is angling away from that, pressing in to catch Isaac’s lower lip between his own.  It feels soft the whole way across beneath the brief caress from the tip of his tongue.  He sucks on it for a second, draws it in for a proper, clinging kiss and breathes. 

He inches back from Isaac’s mouth after a few more pulls from Isaac’s lip, dragging it in only to let it go, and Isaac drops his hand.  “Stiles,” he’s breathing hard through his nose even though all of that was nothing more than slow and deliberate, “neither one of us—”

Stiles knows what Isaac’s going to say.  Knows he’s not wrong about it either except Stiles can only see that Isaac’s eyes are blue when they’re this close.  Only knows gray when he’s a step away and he wants to feel  _right_  for once.  “I want to make a choice.”  Stiles swallows.  “Something that has to be mine.  Something  _I_ chose.”  Something the nogitsune would never have wanted.  This—Isaac, this is all Stiles and he  _knows_  it.

Isaac lets out a heavy breath and Stiles is still watching it puff out his chest when Isaac catches his mouth again.

* * *

Stiles taps against the page of his textbook, sitting on his bed and crowded up against his wall, spine of it balanced awkwardly between his knees.  He can’t focus on the text.  The words are blurring together, but he’s not as terrified of it as he would have been not that long ago.  He suspects it’s exhaustion rather than anything nefarious. 

Isaac’s laying on his stomach perpendicular to him, taking up the whole length of his bed and staring at the back of Stiles’ door rather than the book in front of him.  They’re not touching, which is actually more of an effort than touching would be.  He seems to be working up to something.  Has been since he got here.

Stiles doesn’t read a few more pages and Isaac flicks the cap of his pen with his forefinger and says, “Argent—Chris.  He’s going to Europe, France probably.”  He doesn’t look at Stiles and now he’s staring at some in between space halfway from the edge of the bed to the door.  He shrugs.  “He said I could go with him.”

Stiles snorts, taps his pencil a little harder against the glossy page.  It’s leaving marks.  He doesn’t care.  “Sooner or later, everybody leaves.”  Stiles wishes he were more surprised by it but he really isn’t.  He’s seen too many endless cycles of life and death and life again not to know how transitory it all is.

Isaac clears his throat, looks down at his book and says it like it’s a declaration: “Not this time.” 

Stiles stares at the back of his curly hair and tells him seriously, “I’m not asking you to stay.”

Isaac picks his head up, looks back at him and says simply, “Yeah, you are.”  He struggles into sitting upright and holds Stiles’ gaze.  “And that was me asking if I could.” 

Stiles doesn’t answer, looks away from the blue of Isaac’s eyes out at the leafy green outside his window and knows Isaac knows what he wants without having to say it.

* * *

He shows up later that night with a duffel bag, an inflatable mattress under one arm and a shake of Stiles’ dad’s hand.  Stiles lets all the air out of the stupid thing after a week.  It never does get blown up again.

**Author's Note:**

>   
> [tumblr](http://wellhalesbells.tumblr.com/), if you like _all_ the things I like, it'll be your super favorite place. Otherwise? Total crapshoot. But what's life without a little risk, right?


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